


Jack and the Bean Stalker

by Nagaina



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: But that's okay because so is Gabe, Faeries are bastards, Ghost Stories On Route 66 prequel fic, M/M, Written for They Loved Each Other R76 Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 00:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17192687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaina/pseuds/Nagaina
Summary: Gabriel Reyes loves Jack Morrison. Jack Morrison loves Gabriel Reyes. Unfortunately for them both, a knight of faerie has designs of his own. A faerie tale in three short acts.





	Jack and the Bean Stalker

It took significantly longer than Gabriel thought it would to finish the last of the three tasks, for an assortment of reasons. The first issue was admittedly his own. When he’d imagined the _Hag of Stalcaire_ he’d pictured something closer to an elderly woman, hunchbacked and hobbling, not a goddamned giantess with an equally enormous dog and a hawk the size of an Apache gunship for companions.

 

The second problem was the sword. The sword which, heretofore, had been perfectly content to let him handle things on his own suddenly became extremely voluble and full of criticism regarding his form and tactics while he was trying to avoid being bisected by the poorly-named hag’s gi-fucking-gantic axe. Despite said constant, concentration-breaking mental refrain, he had managed to get the thing to do its job. _Eventually._

 

The third thing was the horse, who, upon making his own assessment of the situation, had bucked Gabe off and then vanished, only trotting back once the worst was over, his tack, hide, and mane all glossily black and immaculately free of grime. Unlike the rest of them.

 

“Some help _you_ were,” Gabe informed him as he completed the process of separating the boulder-like head from the rest of the hag’s mountainous body.

 

_I cannot believe you used me to do that._ The weapon — whose name was Lamentation of the Grieving Northlands but who generally answered to Lenny — griped.

 

“You. Are. A. Sword.” Gabriel growled, and planted it point down in the turf while he fetched a sack from the saddlebags. “Beheading things is one of your _design functions._ ”

 

Seelie Dan whickered in a manner identical  to a snicker as Gabe unfolded the bag — sturdy waxed canvas, thoroughly water and other-fluids proof — and unfolded it until it achieved dimensions sufficient to admit the disembodied cranium.

 

“I don’t know what _you’re_ laughing at. At least he _actually did_ what he was _supposed_ to do, _my mettlesome faery steed._ ”

 

The horse tossed his head mockingly. Gabriel inhaled deeply, counted ten, then meticulously wiped his sword clean and replaced it in the sheath.

 

“Laugh while you can.” Gabriel said grimly, jerking the sack’s ties tight and slinging it back into place, then swinging into the saddle with an audible, bloodsoaked squelch. “ _You’re_ still carrying my ass back to Gheamhradh.”

 

Since he was prepared for it this time, he didn’t get bucked off. Chastened, Seelie Dan hastened across the misty purple moor, eager to rid himself of his muck-covered and malodorous passenger. Said passenger added “ride a faery steed into battle” to the list of things he was never going to do again if he could help it.

 

He was probably going to help it.

 

Maybe.

 

*

 

Gabriel supposed he didn’t have anyone to blame but himself. He’d known from the beginning of their association within the ranks of UNSEP that Jack Morrison was no ordinary human.  No one of purely human extraction had, in the entire history of time, possessed that much personal magnetism and irresistible charisma. Not without a correspondingly gigantic pile of money or power to offset their personality flaws.

 

Jack had neither. His parents owned a produce co-op that mostly served Bloomington and its outlying areas. What Jack _did_ have was the sort of personality that dragged others to him, occasionally against their own better judgment, pressurized them, distilled them, and then decanted them better than they were before he met them. And they all appeared to absolutely _adore_ him for it. It was creepy. It was unnatural. It made the hairs on the back of Gabe’s neck stand up and he resolved to keep himself out of that particular orbit, partly because he wasn’t done enjoying his own personality flaws yet.

 

That resolution lasted about a month and their first assignment together, at which point stupid handsome Jack with his stupidly-blue eyes and stupidly-sunny disposition reeled him in like Jupiter catching rogue asteroids. Before two months were out, Jack made it clear that _he_ enjoyed Gabe’s personality flaws, too, and before six passed they were spending a long holiday weekend at that farm outside Bloomington.

 

Jack’s childhood bedroom looked out over a stretch of woodland that formed the property’s western border.  A dense tangle of old oak and ash and elm, one bit of which seemed denser and darker than the rest.

 

“What’s over there?” Gabe asked, as he watched the sun drop below the treeline, staining the sky an eerie, bloody crimson.

 

“Oh that? The standing-stone circle. It’s a resting spot on the local ley tracks.” A sunny grin. “It’s probably safe to go visit, if you’re interested.”

 

It took a moment for those words to interface in Gabe’s brain with his Foundational Metaphysics of the Otherworld In Theory and Practice seminar — but, when they did, so many things suddenly made sense _._

 

“Faeries. You’re talking about _faeries._ ”

 

“What else?” Jack looked at him and the sun caught his hair and his eyes and his skin and suddenly many _more_ things made sense _._

 

“Oh holy — are _you_ — ?” Gabe’s gesture suggested many complicated things that his brain and his mouth refused to express coherently.

 

“As I understand it,” Jack said, pulling his t-shirt over his head, “my great-great-great-grandfather went missing for a year and a day and came back with a baby strapped to his chest. Since my great-great-great-grandmother already had two children by him and was the sensible kind, she just added one more plate to the table.”

 

“Oh,” Gabe breathed as Jack began the process of divesting him of his own clothing. “That’s — _wow._ ”

 

“Yeah,” Jack’s eyes sparkled a thousand shades of blue. “It’s kinda great, actually.”

 

Except when it wasn’t.

 

Such as now.

 

*

 

Frankly, if necromancy weren’t strictly forbidden by the ethical canons of his craft, Gabe would have had some words of thanks for many-greats-GF-Morrison, because before he’d faffed off forlorn from faerie lands with his baby, he’d had the sense to lay down some _rules_ going forward.

 

_None from the cradle, none innocent of a lover’s touch, none whose heart lies in another’s keeping._

 

Elegant, simple, covering just about everything from the cradle to the grave, and kept generations of Morrisons from being snatched away to become faerie brides and bridegrooms. But not entirely foolproof, especially when a patient knight among the sidhe took a shine to sunny-golden Jack and immediately began the process of rules-lawyering. Thus it was that Jack, no longer innocent of a lover’s touch but his heart not yet technically in another’s keeping, was snatched out of his childhood bedroom _on the night before their wedding._

 

And also how Gabriel came to be hauling his ass all over the misty lands of Faerie where they lay alongside Indi-fucking-ana, carrying out a threesome of tasks with the sometimes dubious assistance of a mouthy sword and an impossibly vain horse. Because the knight had a lord and there were _rules_ they had to follow, such as when the one to whom Jack was promised turned up and demanded a challenge for his hand. They had to honor it. And honor it they did — albeit with attempted murder. Gabriel supposed that was only to be expected.

 

“Gabriel Kingsblood has returned to the House of Gheamhradh!” The herald announced as they came into the receiving hall. “He bears with him the proof of his tasks and craves audience with the Lord of Sgùrr Dubh na da Bheinn!”

 

A handful of courtiers drifted out of the corners, twittering among themselves behind fans and masks.

 

The Lord himself, sprawled languidly in a chair just short of a throne and attended by the asshole knight in question, gestured to the mountainous piles of armor guarding his person and all the exits. “Clear the court. We would receive this petition privily.”

 

The Lord of Sgùrr Dubh na da Bheinn affected the royal _we_ but was not, Gabriel had learned, of royal blood. He wouldn’t have even been a lord, had he not taken Jack’s several-greats-faerie-GM to wife — a union that had apparently not gone well for her. Or at least that’s what those still loyal among her people said, when he’d asked.

 

Gabriel bowed when he reached the base of the dias upon which that not-a-throne sat. “I give you greetings, Lord Gheamhradh, and offer you the treasures you sent me forth to gather.”

 

“Liar and oathbreaker,” the asshole knight declared at once. “It is not possible that you achieved such a thing without the use of your magic, of which you swore you would not avail yourself.”

 

“I have done no such thing.” Gabriel stripped off his gauntlet and held up his hand to show the unbroken oathmarks. “No magic of mine has aided me. In my travels, I came upon those who gave me good help, and I was not forbidden assistance. Do you deny that?”

 

Asshole knight looked like he wanted to argue, but his Lord held up one heavily be-ringed hand. “We do not, for to do so would be a lie. Let us see your proofs, and we will make our judgments on their validity.”

 

From the depths of his cloak, Gabriel withdrew a carved wooden casket and handed it to the herald. “A flawless fruit from a tree on the Isle of Apples, whose scent and nectar can soften even the hardest heart.”

 

The Lord cracked open the casket and a glow not unlike rosy-fingered dawn suffused his icy-pale face. He closed it and nodded. “It is so.”

 

Gabriel drew forth a second casket, and handed it to the herald. “A ring plaited from the hair of a certain lady, whose heart is cold to your loving entreaties.”

 

The Lord cracked open the case, a smile unpleasant in its dimensions spreading across his face. “It is so.”

 

Gabriel drew forth the sack, which he handed to the herald, who handed it to his lord. “The head of the Hag of Stalcaire.”

 

The Lord’s nostrils flared as the malodorous nature of the contents made it past the ties and he laid it quickly aside. “It is so. And yet.”

 

“And yet?” Gabriel asked.

 

The lord steepeled his fingers. “And yet you had the aid of magic. Even if it was not your own.”

 

“That is true,” Gabriel admitted. “What’re you going to do about it?”

 

“Wretch,” hissed asshole knight. “You dare to speak so to your —”

 

“We haven’t yet touched on the stuff I’d dare, so I advise you to shut your cakehole,” Gabriel cut him off. “I’ve fulfilled your tasks. I’ve given you your prizes. I’ve kept the oath I swore to do it. Do you deny that?”

 

“My oath avows the truth of your words.” The Lord replied. “And yet I feel that more must be done.”

 

From the depths of his cloak, Gabriel drew forth a leather pouch and tossed it directly into the lord’s hands, the bauble within spilling forth. “Listen, I know what you want. Your lady fair isn’t giving you the time of day and you need something to charm and woo her. That right there is my gift to you, for her. Turn it on and the music it plays will do the rest. Go ahead, give it a try.”

 

“My lord —” began Asshole Knight, rather hotly.

 

“Be silent.” replied Asshole Lord, and clicked the trigger.

 

The ball in his hands unfolded with delicate clockwork precision, unspooling into a blossoming rose of cream-white petals kissed with crimson, the cylinder chiming to life with a song of heart-aching pure clarity, the air perfumed with the scent of blooming flowers. Both assholes were visibly, involuntarily enchanted by it.

 

“What did I tell you?” Gabriel asked. “And that scent? Aerosolized ferrous sulfate with a little essential oil added.”

 

Within seconds, both assholes were sprawled on the floor, turning dangerous shades of gray and clutching their throats as the cold iron they’d inhaled had the desired effect. From the depths of his cloak, Gabriel drew forth two M2016 combat shotguns, each of which spoke once.

 

“And these are Hellfire and Brimstone because, frankly, iron isn’t antithetical to _everybody,_ but shotgun fire at close range usually is _._ Now,” he turned to the herald who had sensibly stepped back, “where’s my fiancée?”

 

It all fell out pretty rapidly after that: Jack out of the tower ( _Nice doublet, honey. Oh shut the fuck up._ ) and both of them out of the manor, where an impromptu celebration was forming up, since nobody had liked Asshole Lord or Asshole Knight anyway. Gabriel set Jack in front of him in the saddle, wrapped up in his cloak, and kicked his steed into motion. “I can’t believe you named this horse _Seelie Dan._ ”

 

“That’s okay,” Gabriel replied and kissed him. “Just wait till you hear what I call the sword.”

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, Hot Vampire Jack is actually hot part-leannán sídhe Jack. ^_^


End file.
